The present invention relates to portable storage devices, and in particular to secure portable storage devices.
Portable storage devices such as floppy disks, optical disks, flash memory disks and digital tapes, serve users for various purposes, such as copying files from one computer to another, carrying a backup copy of one's files, or synchronizing work spaces among the hard disks of an office PC, a home PC and a laptop computer.
A portable storage device can be lost or stolen, exposing its owner to the risk of others reading sensitive information from his or her work or private files. Therefore, it is highly desirable to secure the contents of portable storage devices by encryption and/or by blocking unauthorized access to stored data by hardware means, as described, for example, in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/304,772 and 10/359,195, both of which are incorporated by reference for all purposes as if fully set forth herein.
Another risk associated with the loss of a portable storage device, as well as with technical faults, is the loss of critical or important data that are impossible or hard to retrieve from their original sources. For example, a traveling businessperson may use his or her portable storage device to collect presentations, white papers and contract drafts, which may be very hard to obtain again if the originals are lost. Thus, a routine backup of the contents of a portable storage device is often a necessity. Such backup may be done to a compact disk, to a hard drive of a personal computer, or to a remote server over the Internet. However, such backup may compromise the security of the contents, which security is otherwise maintained very tightly. For example, a traveler who carries sensitive data secured within a flash disk, may compromise the security of the data by carrying a CD with a clear backup copy of the data.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a backup solution, for data carried in a portable storage device, that offers data security while being also convenient, flexible and efficient.